Georgia crisis raises hopes in Moldovan rebel region
TIRASPOL (Reuters) - Soldiers marched in neat formation while crowds sang boastful Soviet-era songs and waved flags under the steady gaze of a Lenin statue in central Tiraspol, capital of Moldova's breakaway Transdniestria region.
It was a small affair -- no tanks or spectacular fly-past by fighter jets -- but what Transdniestria had to show, it showed off proudly at a parade on Tuesday to celebrate the day it declared independence in 1990.
People in this would-be state, a strip of land just 30 km (20 miles) wide and 200 km (120 miles) from north to south, have been heartened by Moscow's recognition of secessionists from another ex-Soviet state, Georgia, following a brief war last month.
Russia sent in troops and tanks to repel a Georgian attempt to retake South Ossetia and has vowed to protect it and Abkhazia, a second breakaway province, from further attack.
"Just as they have recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia, we very, very much ask Medvedev, Putin, everyone in Moscow to recognize us," Zinaida Ivanova, a pensioner attending the parade, said referring to Russia's president and prime minister.
"We deserve it just as much."
Like Georgia's rebel regions, Transdniestria broke from Moldova -- a country of 4.1 million squashed between Ukraine and EU-member Romania -- in the early 1990s.
Populated by half a million Russian-speakers including 120,000 Russian citizens, Transdniestria feared Romania would merge with Moldova, whose people speak a variant of Romanian.
There followed a brief civil war that was halted by the intervention of Moscow's forces and Russian peacekeepers remain in the zone to prevent any resumption of fighting.
While the conflict has remained frozen ever since, the outbreak of hostilities in Georgia has increased tensions in the unrelated Moldovan dispute.
Transdniestria last month broke off the first talks in seven years between the two sides until the Moldovan authorities denounced "Georgian aggression" in South Ossetia, a request Moldova ignored.
Igor Smirnov, Transdniestria's self-styled president, called for Moldova's President Vladimir Voronin to recognize the region's independence.
"We cannot unite a society that is developing along different paths," he told journalists on Sunday. "A generation has grown up in Moldova which knows nothing of Transdniestria and ours knows nothing of Moldova."
RUSSIAN ROLE
Although Russia's relations with the West have been badly damaged by the Georgia crisis, analysts suggest Moscow would like to show that it can broker a peaceful deal in one of the frozen conflicts left over from the breakup of the Soviet Union. Continued...
Palin to quit as Alaska governor
